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Plans For Widespread Monitoring of Communication In Europe Revealed

TrueSatan writes "A leak from the Clean IT project reveals how it has been subverted from its original, much more innocuous, goals into a surveillance horror story with democratic freedoms and personal rights being the victims." The leaked document in question. Gems include member states repealing anti-filtering laws and a mandate that ISPs be held liable for not reporting terrorist use of their networks. The Clean IT Project counters that there's nothing to see here (amazingly, through a series of tweets with a journalist).

166 comments

  1. Just use encryption. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Problem solved.

    1. Re:Just use encryption. by Yvanhoe · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The next step is to ban it. Do not wait until it is too late to show your disagreement.

      --
      The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
    2. Re:Just use encryption. by MightyMartian · · Score: 3, Insightful

      How could anyone meaningfully ban encryption? First of all, financial security is built on top of encryption algorithms. Second of all, they're algorithms. I would be like trying to ban F=MA.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    3. Re:Just use encryption. by FoolishOwl · · Score: 4, Informative

      Then they don't "meaningfully" ban encryption. They just use it as an excuse to harass, arrest, and interrogate people they don't like.

    4. Re:Just use encryption. by penix1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No, it would be more like you are guilty of whatever they are accusing you of BECAUSE you used encryption. Why would you encrypt it in the first place if you didn't have something to hide?

      --
      This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
    5. Re:Just use encryption. by ThatsMyNick · · Score: 4, Insightful

      They can still track who you talk to, who your friends are, what websites you visit, who you call (assuming your calls encrypted, if not what you talk).
       
      Encryption hardly solves the problem.

    6. Re:Just use encryption. by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      How do you ban VoIP if your telco loves its international rates?
      You make the risk of been caught very chilling -
      Deep packet inspection of ports used, known data and some nice new equipment in every isp.
      You home, dorm, RV, boat, park bench is not a bank doing transactions every night for hours and the telco knows it.....
      A skilled user helps a new stranger in a chatroom who is a friend of a friend...
      First warning, a payment and invited down for a simple chat, some free IT advice and the app that caused the problem.
      Second time a much longer chat in a smaller room with much larger payment needed and a glossy sticker for your computer.
      Third time your home is raided and your life turned upside down. All your data is inspected, hardware not returned. Any IT/Telco/Tech work with any security requirements is now out of reach.
      Import/export, federal crypto laws start to add up.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    7. Re:Just use encryption. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Such logic is already in use in the United States where people are arrested for supposed crimes and their unwillingness to hand over the passwords to their encrypted hard drives is used as prime evidence that they have something to hide.

      It's a wonderful Catch-22 they have pretty much everyone in. Protect your personal information from the bad guys and then they use the fact that you are using such protection to say that you must be involved in something illegal, otherwise why would you be encrypting your information.

      As long as they can keep using this as a tactic to arrest and detain people without real cause other than the encrypting of personal information, they will not make such encryption against the law.

    8. Re:Just use encryption. by lightknight · · Score: 1

      Gotta do something to keep those nerds in their place.

      --
      I am John Hurt.
    9. Re:Just use encryption. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      You should read about onion routing. Tor is one solution to this problem. It makes it impossible for outside parties to know with whom you communicated. The US Navy thought it would be a cool thing to aid dissenters in oppressive third world countries, not realizing it would also aid dissenters in oppressive first world countries.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(anonymity_network)

    10. Re:Just use encryption. by stanlyb · · Score: 2, Informative

      You mean, just like it is in France? Where using encryption to encode your mail is considered criminal?????

    11. Re:Just use encryption. by Artifakt · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Onion routing and similar by the big dogs relies on there being lots of other users of such systems. If only a few Western government sponsored spies were using a Tor-like system in a place such as Iran, then the local authorities would be willing to devote a lot of their resources to trying to catch those few people. Devoting those same sort of resources to catching 10,000 people who turn out to be just trying to get locally illegal porn or pirate music to maybe get one spy OTOH is terribly wasteful. The Iranian government does not want to spend that many resources on prosecuting very minor crimes by the thousands or even millions just to get an occasional real spy, just like the United States would not want to conduct house to house searches of the entirity of New York City to catch one bank robber, or set up constantly relocating roadside stops every five miles all over every interstate highway and stop all commercial truck traffic, just to nab the occasional drunk.
            The problem here is, the Intelligence agencies that developed Onion routing knew there had to be a lot of trivially illegal, semi-legal and fully legal traffic to hide their uses, and in some cases, they actually spread information to aid that civilian development (as in your example of the US Navy). So, either laws against these systems will not pass because the government people proposing them will be called aside to explain why they shouldn't, or the laws will pass, but all the international Intelligence players will know those countries that passed them have switched to something else and hope to make it harder for the lagging countries to continue to use these methods by encouraging international adoption. Put more simply, if a law against onion routing software was actually passed in the US, it would prove the CIA, etc. were no longer relying on onion routing software, and everybody else's intelligence depts. would know this. But frequently proposing such laws only to have them come to nothing, leaves other people's agencies wondering just what the hell they are dealing with.

      --
      Who is John Cabal?
    12. Re:Just use encryption. by gizmonic · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The problem with that here in the USA is that people are completely clueless about their rights. The Fifth Amendment is there to protect the innocent from over zealous prosecution. The second someone on a jury buys the "why use it if you have nothing to hide" argument, they've essentially bought into the defendant being guilty and needing to prove innocence. Unfortunately, most of them can't think a thought deeper than the last 30 second commercial they saw, so good luck getting them to comprehend something with that level of importance.

      --
      WWJD?
      JWRTFM!
    13. Re:Just use encryption. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

      Too true. I call the it the homo almost-sapiens phenomenon. It's an amazing idea; two species capable of interbreeding, homo sapiens and homo almost-sapiens, but one not quite a thinking man and, unfortunately, these are the ones in the majority.

    14. Re:Just use encryption. by romiz · · Score: 4, Informative

      It is legal to encrypt anything in France since 1996 for 128-bit symmetrical keys, and for any key since 2004. While the law was valid for a long time, I do not have knowledge of any prosecution on that basis.

    15. Re:Just use encryption. by vincefn · · Score: 5, Informative

      You mean, just like it is in France? Where using encryption to encode your mail is considered criminal?????

      Nice trolling: encryption is perfectly legal in France. The French chapter of the Free Software Foundation even took care of getting an official approval for encryption tools like GnuPG and OpenSSL. See http://fsffrance.org/dcssi/dcssi.fr.html#dossiers (link in French)

      And for a governmental source, look at the ssi.gouv.fr website, specifically on:
      http://www.ssi.gouv.fr/fr/reglementation-ssi/cryptologie/index.html (link in French)
      first paragraph states:"Under article 30 of Law 2004-575 of June 21st, 2004 on confidence in the digital economy, the use of cryptology is free in France."

    16. Re:Just use encryption. by kenorland · · Score: 0

      Encryption is already illegal in Europe in many cases.

    17. Re:Just use encryption. by captainpanic · · Score: 2

      This.
      Many people just don't seem to care. It's either too difficult to understand, or they think they can find technological workarounds.

      Those who do understand the implications and who don't think workarounds are the solution should make as much noise as possible. I have nothing to hide, but that doesn't mean I want my government to listen to me all the time. It's none of their business.

    18. Re:Just use encryption. by daem0n1x · · Score: 1

      Funny, I live in Europe and never noticed this. Care to show some evidence?

    19. Re:Just use encryption. by PiMuNu · · Score: 1

      Been reading Le Carre?

    20. Re:Just use encryption. by aaaaaaargh! · · Score: 1

      There is probably not even a need to limit or ban encryption, because in a sense the Internet is already heavily regulated and not what it used to be. Thanks to all kinds of NATs, packet filters, and "intelligent" routers, the times when you could just connect one computer to another one to transmit information are long gone. Nowadays, if you want to be sure that your message reaches the destination without using a central server (which can be surveilled, subpoenaed, put under draconian laws, etc.) you need to dig through miriads of obscure heuristic NAT traversal techniques and use all kinds of hacks like ICMP tunneling or whatever. That in combination with government trojans, traffic analysis, and anti hacking (anti security) laws should suffice to suppress the citizens of Europe.

    21. Re:Just use encryption. by aaaaaaargh! · · Score: 1

      I think you've got it the wrong way 'round.

      That onion routing is not yet prohibited might be due to the fact that systems like TOR have been sufficiently subverted already (e.g. most fixed nodes could be run by cooperating intelligende agencies). The more users who use them, the harder it will become to break the system. Thus, in future onion routing will be prohibited if it gains widespread support.

      Not that I believe any of this, just wanted to lay out a slightly more logical conspiracy theory. :P

    22. Re:Just use encryption. by Arancaytar · · Score: 2, Informative

      The same way you meaningfully ban anything else - by arresting anyone who does it. "Check this box if you are living in a country that allows encryption" sounds like a joke to us, but in places where your traffic is already monitored, using encryption may well draw unfriendly attention from authorities. It's not like encrypted traffic is hard to recognize without taking other obfuscation measures.

      (Even in many countries where encryption is allowed, a court can force you to surrender your key.)

    23. Re:Just use encryption. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      We, the computer technicians, are the ones who can make a difference here. We should force encryption and secure communications on everybody. Make it the default in everything we develop. Make it a requirement in standards.
      - It will make people who use encryption for something else than cat photos less conspicuous.
      - It will provide more security for people who need it but aren't technically savvy.
      - It's a great defense in court: "I didn't do that, the computer did it and I wouldn't even know how to change it."

      For example: I know Enigmail but it shouldn't be an add-on, and it's a pain to use when it should be completely transparent. The next email client should look up all recipients on key servers and use PGP for everybody with a public key without even asking. If they write back "I can't read this gibberish" or "That's not my key", tell them how to upgrade their email client or revoke the public key(*). No harm done.

      (*) OK, I wouldn't even know how to do that. AFAIK you can only revoke a public key if you have the secret key. What do you do when you lost the secret key or never had it (because someone else created it on your behalf)? Untrust yourself?

    24. Re:Just use encryption. by gl4ss · · Score: 1

      well, they do propose that they could order internet service providers to weaken the encryption on services they choose.

      what we need is NAMES.. NAMES of the officials behind this trainwreck.

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    25. Re:Just use encryption. by __aaltlg1547 · · Score: 1

      Worse! You won't bother to retain the keys to files you no longer need and you might trash those keys. When the government subpoenas your files in a case against your buddy, you won't be able to provide them. Now you're a co-conspirator and guilty of obstruction. No change in laws is needed to use them against you.

    26. Re:Just use encryption. by Chrisq · · Score: 1

      Problem solved.

      OK: PPO6nmfecW SilmMYspZe jk5Yu8JN5r XXwzpkjaUz oB1u7K0WVS WgbkpXQbwG 7HdAEhmKKn YB65nrQk63 54ndFR5ihW gRpPFxSFo6

    27. Re:Just use encryption. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > it makes it impossible for outside parties to know with whom you communicated.

      No, it doesn't. Realtime mix networks are all _highly_ vulnerable to timing analysis: In the simplest form if the attacker can observe the traffic going in (even if its encrypted) and coming out then he can rapidly compare the timing and determine with high confidence the source. It certainly ups the bar for surveillance but it's _far_ from impossible, especially of your advisory is a first world government.

      Tor is good and useful, and people should use it. But often believing you have more protection than you do is worse than not having protection but at least knowing your risks.

    28. Re:Just use encryption. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How could anyone meaningfully ban encryption? First of all, financial security is built on top of encryption algorithms. Second of all, they're algorithms. I would be like trying to ban F=MA.

      They can require licenses, which you as a private person will not get. Essentially this is selective banning.

    29. Re:Just use encryption. by Thiez · · Score: 2

      > There is probably not even a need to limit or ban encryption, because in a sense the Internet is already heavily regulated and not what it used to be. Thanks to all kinds of NATs, packet filters, and "intelligent" routers, the times when you could just connect one computer to another one to transmit information are long gone. Nowadays, if you want to be sure that your message reaches the destination without using a central server (which can be surveilled, subpoenaed, put under draconian laws, etc.) you need to dig through miriads of obscure heuristic NAT traversal techniques and use all kinds of hacks like ICMP tunneling or whatever.

      So basically what you're saying is: "traffic can be intercepted, therefore the government doesn't need to outlaw encryption." Surely you understand that the entire fucking point of encrypting a connection is to make intercepted data useless? Your argument makes no sense at all. With encryption, why worry about your traffic passing through the ominously named 'central server'?

    30. Re:Just use encryption. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Simple, require a license to use encryption.

    31. Re:Just use encryption. by kenorland · · Score: 1

      Many European nations have mandatory key disclosure laws (France, UK, Belgium, the Netherlands). That is, if you keep your data encrypted and don't disclose it to the police, you can be thrown in jail, by law.

    32. Re:Just use encryption. by daem0n1x · · Score: 1

      So, if police has a warrant they can force you to decrypt your data so they can look at them. I can't see anything unusual about this. How does it translate to "encryption is illegal in Europe"???

    33. Re:Just use encryption. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      1. Lock down all computer systems and ban anything which lets user run their own code
      2. Ban access to any computer security related material and put known hackers under surveillance
      3. Give a "think of the kids" speech
      4. Start a witch hunt for thought-criminals

      If nobody has free access to computer systems, then encryption becomes meaningless for the purposes of security.

    34. Re:Just use encryption. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    35. Re:Just use encryption. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Google does this already and no one says anything about it.

    36. Re:Just use encryption. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You had me thinking deeply here. When a jury decides what defenses can or can't be used to determine guilt, they set precedence for lawyers in future cases.

    37. Re:Just use encryption. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Computer technicians are a dying breed. (Mobile devices seem to be taking over and have far fewer service requirements. You just throw them away. This even scares me.)
      So the trick here would be just to make sure people enable encryption on their mobile devices. (Not available on every device yet.)

    38. Re:Just use encryption. by kenorland · · Score: 1

      How does it translate to "encryption is illegal in Europe"???

      If you keep your data encrypted and don't reveal it to the police, you get thrown in jail. Seems pretty straightforward.

      I can't see anything unusual about this

      If you're European, that is hardly surprising.

    39. Re:Just use encryption. by stanlyb · · Score: 1

      Did you read my post??? I did not say email, i said MAIL.

    40. Re:Just use encryption. by daem0n1x · · Score: 1

      How does it translate to "encryption is illegal in Europe"???

      If you keep your data encrypted and don't reveal it to the police, you get thrown in jail.

      That doesn't make any sense. I can use encryption as much as I want just like I can keep anything I want inside my house. But if there's a judicial warrant to search my house, how is that different from searching my data? Jumping from that to the conclusion that "encryption is illegal in Europe" is simply a stupid exaggeration of somebody who desperately wants to bash Europe.

      Seems pretty straightforward. I can't see anything unusual about this

      If you're European, that is hardly surprising.

      Ah, I love the smell of anti-European bigotry in the morning. Yeah, we're truly miserable here, I wish I could be free as a bird, just like you Americans with your Guantanamo, extraordinary renditions, illegal wiretapping, the TSA, and so on.

    41. Re:Just use encryption. by kenorland · · Score: 1

      I can use encryption as much as I want just like I can keep anything I want inside my house

      You can use encryption all you want--except when it matters: to keep your information secure from the government.

      Ah, I love the smell of anti-European bigotry in the morning. Yeah, we're truly miserable here

      You are; I lived in Europe for many years, and my family immigrated from there. And the funny thing is that you're so ignorant, you don't even know what's going on in your own continent.

    42. Re:Just use encryption. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      if a law against onion routing software was actually passed in the US, it would prove the CIA, etc. were no longer relying on onion routing software, and everybody else's intelligence depts. would know this.

      Or they have already moved past onion routing, but want to keep the opposition doubting whether they are still using onion routing or not.

    43. Re:Just use encryption. by daem0n1x · · Score: 0

      I can use encryption as much as I want just like I can keep anything I want inside my house

      You can use encryption all you want--except when it matters: to keep your information secure from the government.

      Yeah, because the big bad government is out to get ya! Did you forget to take your Lithium today?

      Ah, I love the smell of anti-European bigotry in the morning. Yeah, we're truly miserable here

      You are; I lived in Europe for many years, and my family immigrated from there. And the funny thing is that you're so ignorant, you don't even know what's going on in your own continent.

      So, we're miserable? I wonder which European country you lived in, Albania? You bitch about big bad European governments wanting to spy on your data but you're so smug about living in the... USA??? WTF?

    44. Re:Just use encryption. by kenorland · · Score: 1

      You bitch about big bad European governments wanting to spy on your data but you're so smug about living in the... USA??? WTF?

      Despite its problems, my government still respects my civil rights more than your government respects yours. Of course, what really bugs people like you is that my government doesn't respect your civil rights.

      I wonder which European country you lived in, Albania?

      Switzerland, UK, France, and Germany (in increasing order of awfulness and violation of civil liberties).

  2. The Only People Who Benefit From This by GeneralTurgidson · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Are consultants and hardware manufacturers. The government has no idea what to do with this information, and its going to spend an enormous amount of money for what will end up being a data vault that is locked away because its too big of a failure to admit they were wrong in the first place to attempt this.

    1. Re:The Only People Who Benefit From This by Charliemopps · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And then the wrong person gets elected to office and this vault becomes your living nightmare. The problem with this sort of data collection isn't the benevolent intent of the present, it's the malevolent intent of the future.

    2. Re:The Only People Who Benefit From This by girlintraining · · Score: 4, Insightful

      They could always use it to source new episodes of CSI. "Zoom in on that packet! Right there, between the 1 and the 0 -- enhance that. We found the killer's digital fingerprint inside this captured packet. Gear up, let's go get this dirtbag!" Kidding aside, you're right but only to a point. There are few people who would deny that the Allied power's interception and decryption of the Axis' communications during WWII was invaluable in helping win the war. What isn't known is that many of those communiques still haven't been read. Even back then, the amount of information intelligence services had to sort through was enormous.

      The problem in the intelligence community today is not finding new ways of getting the data -- in fact, the technology to do that has been installed in every telco switch and every internet access point since not long after AT&T started replacing phone operators with banks of programmable relays. The effort required to get the data is trivial. The amount of resources required to store the data is less trivial, but we already have massive data centers sitting in remote parts of the United States doing nothing but storing said information for various law enforcement agencies -- not that they're hard to find, just look for images that have been cut and pasted from other locations on satellite imagery, if they bother to hide them at all.

      However, making use of that information has always been problematic -- and most intelligence failures, including 9/11, Pearl Harbor, Oklahoma city, and a very long list of military intelligence SNAFUs in this country can trace their origins to the lack of analysis of the data. Converting raw digital data into actionable intelligence still requires a lot of man power. A substantial portion of the NSA, FBI, and CIA's budget is dedicated towards the very simple task of translating. As in, converting say, islamic into english. A more substantial portion is dedicated to people analyzing those translations, sorting through the massive amount of information, and compiling it into situation reports, which are then either posted internally to wiki-like data stores, or forwarded up the chain of command and assembled into briefings where management decides if its actionable. Only a small portion of their budget is dedicated to capturing and storing data -- and yes, that also includes all the birds they have orbiting.

      Analysis of available information has always been the achilles heel of intelligence services. I doubt even 0.1% of the information stored in all those data centers is ever used. The rest just sits there, gathering dust, on the off-chance that someday, an analyst will push a button labelled "Tell me everything about X", and the drive with that information on it will spin up and spit it out into a report.

      --
      #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
    3. Re:The Only People Who Benefit From This by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The government has no idea what to do with this information

      I keep on hearing this from posters here on Slashdot and elsewhere in the blogosphere or anywhere there is commentary on the subject.

      "the data is going to be too big, to do anything useful with it" is a very common meme.

      But this is so far from the truth. Just look at what Google has done with the disparate information on the net. In a sea of data it is very easy to find identifiable information of individuals from very little.

      I started playing the "who is this guy emailing me, really" game after dealing with a bunch of "Craigslist Flakes". As a simple example: Just looking at X-Originating-IP in an email combined with Google can reveal a great deal of personal information about the sender.

      The editors of Slashdot can even try to extrapolate data on me right now. Submissions I've posted, pages I've visited. They can look for my ip somewhere else on the net and try to associate it with a name. It's not an exact science since they are only going by my IP and it sometimes changes. But as with all things, that can be worked out. To Slashdot I am not really an Anonymous Coward.

      The data collected by the government will be easily searched/correlated/whatever when they need it to be. It's not going to be too big.

    4. Re:The Only People Who Benefit From This by Animats · · Score: 4, Informative

      The problem in the intelligence community today is not finding new ways of getting the data -- in fact, the technology to do that has been installed in every telco switch and every internet access point since not long after AT&T started replacing phone operators with banks of programmable relays. The effort required to get the data is trivial.

      Big-time wiretapping never went into US electromechanical phone switches. I had to look into this once. Until switches went digital, wiretapping was a huge pain for law enforcement. Court-ordered wiretaps required manual wiring at the distributing frame. New York Telephone billed law enforcement for wiretaps at leased line rates. When Guliani was a prosecutor going after the Mafia, they had serious budget problems paying for wiretaps. On one occasion, the FBI didn't pay their bill, and New York Telephone billed the party being wiretapped. That was one of the motivations for CALEA.

      There was a very limited capability to listen in remotely by using the Automatic Line Insulation Test equipment. That equipment normally cycled through lines in the pre-dawn hours, when cables are damp, applying test voltages across the line and between line and ground. (This is the cause of the early morning "bell tap" problem with some low-end phones.) ALIT could be used remotely to test or listen in on a line. But an ALIT unit in the crossbar era was three racks of test gear, and a crossbar central office would typically only have two of them for 50,000 lines. Sometimes telcos would let the FBI use one for a while, but tying it up for any length of time interfered with operations. So dial-up wiretapping was strictly for emergencies.

      Now we have wiretapping designed into everything.

    5. Re:The Only People Who Benefit From This by c0lo · · Score: 2

      Are consultants and hardware manufacturers.

      True. Page 7.

      8.Governments must subsidize competent NGOs that substantially contribute to reducing terrorist use of the Internet...
      10. Governments should subsidize the initial development of software...

      11. Governments should include Internet companies' track record [sic] on reducing terrorist use of Internet as a criterion in purchasing policies...

      But...

      [PP] The government has no idea what to do with this information,

      While true, the above sins by omission... you see, not even they (Clean IT) know what exactly is "the terrorist use of Internet"... and it's highly probable it is not in their interest for somebody to know: as a "private self/un-regulated police" not accountable to anyone, ambiguity helps their bottom line.

      [page 9] 3. All kinds of Internet companies LEA and NGOs, but not governments should promote the use of ...
      [page 10] g. Internet companies must be sufficiently (quantity and quality) staffed or supported to handle reports. Recognizing illegal, terrorist use of internet requires specialist knowledge on terrorism, (national) legislation and (national) cultural differences
      [Page 11] a. No wording of European standard service/business conditions or abuse policy should be recommended...
      c. Local law and what is considered as unwanted by local society must be a decisive factor. "Unwanted by local society" may refer to content that is fully legal and which may also be in line with terms and conditions of the relevant service provider

      --
      Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
    6. Re:The Only People Who Benefit From This by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      That's true and it's not just the information - it's the precedent. Actually, I'd say it mostly about setting the precedent for human beings to bend over and take it. Seems, like we're mostly being led into a dark cul de sac.

    7. Re:The Only People Who Benefit From This by DarkOx · · Score: 2

      Oh somebody understands what to do with it. Identifying the terrorists is a plausible use to sell some bleeding heart politicians and the public on it. In reality there is not algorithm heuristic or otherwise that is:

      A) Efficient enough to go through a large enough portion of the data to correlate enough information on today's computing and storage platforms

      B) Accurate enough to really spot the difference between a terrorist and teenager having a bad day. They might be good enough to flag 10's of 1000's of people for an army of human intelligence analysts to look at but that is as near as it gets.

      C) Has a good enough command of enough languages to start to A or B for the portion of the population that has to this point been the frequent source of terrorist activity.

      While the EU intelligence organizations and the NSA likely have some thing slightly better or at least bigger IBM's Watson demonstrations last year were probably fairly representative of "the state of the art" as large natural language unstructured data correlation engines go. I think we can see its not good enough for terror spotting.

      No what this is really for is to ensure that when someone does something otherwise legal that causes grief to the wrong parties they will be able to find something on that person. Its been the way of tyrants to solve the problem of civil rights since democracy began, just pass enough laws such that everyone is guilty of something, than you have as much control as under any autocracy. They problem was being able to be sure you had the evidence to paint that individual as guilty when the time came.

      Sift thru the data store for any possible illegal action by $person is exactly something that we can do with this technology and that is how its going to get used.

      --
      Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
    8. Re:The Only People Who Benefit From This by oboeaaron · · Score: 2

      A substantial portion of the NSA, FBI, and CIA's budget is dedicated towards the very simple task of translating. As in, converting say, islamic into english.

      I can see the problem. Islamic language scholars are really hard to find. Similarly, during WWII it was difficult for the allies to keep up with the volume of sigintel from Europe, Africa, and other countries due to the shortage of individuals qualified to translate from the Lutheran and Catholic.

      -Pedantic Reader

      --
      Journey onward.
    9. Re:The Only People Who Benefit From This by tibit · · Score: 1

      Winner of teh internets for today! Bravo! Gems like this appear every once in a while, and I've learned never to have any drinks near the keyboard while reading the tubes. Thanks for making my day.

      --
      A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
    10. Re:The Only People Who Benefit From This by Grumbleduke · · Score: 1

      The Only People Who Benefit From This... Are consultants and hardware manufacturers.

      And where do you think the lobbying for this is coming from. The rumours going around in the UK are that the plans for mass Internet surveillance here are being pushed because a few of the big arms contractors have a huge number of "black boxes" for spying on internet connections, but most dictatorships either already have them, are difficult to trade with, or have been recently overthrown, so the companies are having to go begging to 'Western' countries.

      Well, that and the nanny-state types who think they'll win support and votes by throwing around the "think of the children" or "protect us from the evil terrorists" arguments.

    11. Re:The Only People Who Benefit From This by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Crooks know what to do with it, and they will get their hands on it.

  3. Homelands for native peoples by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You can learn about other cultures by traveling and free trade.

    Mixing different groups together used to be good -- when there was assimilation. Now, not so much. Countries should add a "promise to culturally assimilate" clause before allowing further immigration.

    Note: Blasphemy the law in many places. Be careful of the slippery slope that brings that to your town.

    I'd have more to say, but I need to make a chicharones run, while it is still legal.

  4. yet another slippery slope by kermidge · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I made a real try at reading the doc in a dispassionate, scholarly fashion, but couldn't make it past page ten: I kept seeing in mind's eye the substitution of other words for "terrorist," leading to "anybody we don't like" and ending with "everyone except us." Knowing that this and the many similar plans would have been a Stasi wet-dream didn't help.

    1. Re:yet another slippery slope by c0lo · · Score: 1

      Knowing that this and the many similar plans would have been a Stasi wet-dream didn't help.

      Well... something needs to be done!!! It is unacceptable that Europe falls behind Iran in providing a clear internet for its citizens.

      </sarcasm>

      --
      Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
    2. Re:yet another slippery slope by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Also, a large part of the document consists mostly contested proposals which probably brake several EU and national laws. The links on the front page of the CleanIT suggests that the real coal of the project is to make EUistan internet a Facebook buddy of Israel's current leadership. Get your tin helmets ready, gentlemen! For the whiter, cleaner and more Israel friendly internet awaits!

  5. Net Neutrality by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...Because giving governments "oversight" of our communications would never turn into a surveillance horror story.

    1. Re:Net Neutrality by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Because the ISPs would never voluntarily become surveillance lackeys for governments or other interests. Oh wait...

  6. Just Ban Encryption - Has Already Started by Crypto+Gnome · · Score: 5, Informative

    An article from March 19, 2012 shows that The Ban On Encryption is already a Work In Progress.

    --
    Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
    1. Re:Just Ban Encryption - Has Already Started by Crypto+Gnome · · Score: 1
      --
      Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
    2. Re:Just Ban Encryption - Has Already Started by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Don't forget about pumping the omnipresent cameras into facial recognition software, and dumping it all into tracking databases. This on top of character recognition tracking license plates.

      Oh, you're gonna get Godwinned. Hitler, Napoleon, Genghis Khan, these all approve.

      --
      (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
    3. Re:Just Ban Encryption - Has Already Started by girlintraining · · Score: 1

      An article from March 19, 2012 shows that The Ban On Encryption is already a Work In Progress.

      Good luck with that. Encryption keeps the cost of doing business on the internet low. Without it, transactions would have to be sent in the clear, which means they would be vulnerable to interception and manipulation. Realtime modification of IP packets (or recording of payload) is a trivial task -- most routers and managed switches have the ability to filter and mirror IP packets. If you make encryption illegal, you're handing even the dullest criminals carte blanche access to our financial accounts. Business online would become a very risky venture.

      They'll never ban encryption. They will, however, probably engineer backdoors into encryption algorithms and equipment via things like the TPMs installed in people's computers, and add unique identifiers and such to assist in tracking. The more complex the system, the more likely it is to have a backdoor in it that will survive inspection.

      --
      #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
    4. Re:Just Ban Encryption - Has Already Started by Chrisq · · Score: 1

      Don't forget about pumping the omnipresent cameras into facial recognition software, and dumping it all into tracking databases.

      I'd show the facial recognition cameras my arse, but it would probably show as a false positive on John Prescott.

  7. Bill of rights constitudion or whatever by EmperorOfCanada · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The various groups such as the police, moral majorities, or whomever will keep badgering the politicians for these types of laws to "protect the children" or "protect our rights" but in reality these laws are all of the type: music leads to dancing which leads to the unspeakable. The only thing to finally put a stop to them is to enshrine privacy rights in whatever constitutions, bills of rights or whatever structure has the final common sense say in any modern legal system. A well written code should last for decades as it should not be technology specific just information specific. It should spell out what data the government can gather without a warrant. It should also spell out that corporations can only gather the information required for billing customers who have agreed to be billed. Any other information gathering should be a civil rights violation. So if the police record license plates as you drive by then boom they are busted. Or if we get some cool medical implants that record stuff and the hospital gathers it and passes it on to a drug company or insurance company then busted.

    Personally I would even like to see my grocery store stopped from gathering my shopping habits. Basically tally my total charge me and then forget that I was there. I want it so that the police aren't even allowed to ask for data from a company's computer unless they have a warrant. Not even a peek.

    If these things aren't stopped now then the new normal will be a government and corporations who will be able to know way too much about you. A grocery store that pulls up your phone IMEI and asks the phone company who you are. Then asks to see what sites you have been surfing to see what they can sell you. What is stopping the phone company and your ISP from selling this data?

    I can see a 13 year old boy called into the principal's office and expelled because of the "disgusting" sites they were surfing at home the night before. If the ISP were owned by some bible thumper what law is stopping them from handing this data to anyone? Right now as long as you put it into the terms of service where we all blindly click "I agree" the company should be pretty safe. Also those terms of service almost always blah blah about sharing with 3rd parties.

    My guess as to the main reason that this isn't done more is that most people don't have the skills to properly mix and match such different data sets. Plus some companies might be reluctant to really piss of their customers. But when any of these companies are on the ropes financially they will make any deal with any devil that comes along.

    1. Re:Bill of rights constitudion or whatever by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Personally I would even like to see my grocery store stopped from gathering my shopping habits. Basically tally my total charge me and then forget that I was there.

      You can do this today, if you want: Pay with cash. Don't use a store discount card.

    2. Re:Bill of rights constitudion or whatever by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      music leads to dancing which leads to the unspeakable

      No. Being lonely and horny leads to the unspeakable. Music and dancing are social activities which create the process of dating, which in turn cures being lonely and horny; temporarily.

    3. Re:Bill of rights constitudion or whatever by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I can see a 13 year old boy called into the principal's office and

      Selective outrage. You won't even blink while the statists inflict protein deficiency on your kid.

    4. Re:Bill of rights constitudion or whatever by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're more likely to get in trouble by posting politically incorrect views. Viewing porn would have been an issue in the 50s if the internet was around then.

    5. Re:Bill of rights constitudion or whatever by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah because being only able to eat 650-850 calories in a single meal is such a starvation diet. Man, first world problems are the biggest bitches some time, no? What a bunch of a fatties.

    6. Re:Bill of rights constitudion or whatever by tibit · · Score: 1

      If you're doing athletics in school and burn 3kCal a day, you're going to be in deep trouble if you only eat 0.85kCal for lunch. IOW, you're an idiot.

      Note: 1 Cal = 1000 cal. The former are the "dietary calories" used in the U.S. Everyone else uses kcal instead of Cal.

      --
      A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
    7. Re:Bill of rights constitudion or whatever by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It wasn't just athletes whining about it, though. Also, the limit was only for the school-provided lunch. There is nothing stopping them from bringing their own food for after their practices or to supplement the lunch. Most of these people whining are fatties who were pigging out on junk.

    8. Re:Bill of rights constitudion or whatever by Blaskowicz · · Score: 1

      Those kids "pigging out on junk" need a big lunch so they don't have to rely on junk food, you dumbwit. I have trouble understanding this, being French, we have long school hours so we always got a meaningful lunch, with bread. Maybe WW2 made us value meals and we don't have kids relying on snacks. By the way hard calorie limits are dumb, sugar calories are bad but fat or normal glucide calories are better. Ban all sodas and gatorade at lunch but give the kids food.

    9. Re:Bill of rights constitudion or whatever by Blaskowicz · · Score: 1

      I'm a skinny and need a nice lunch or I will have low blood sugar level. Skinnies have a high metabolism and fatties a lower one so those ones arguably need less calories, unless they need them because they're bigger overall ignoring the fat layer.

  8. All paid for by... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Microsoft and Google fines...

    1. Re:All paid for by... by Z34107 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I find it ironic that the states who want to fine Google for Street View and recording stray broadcasts are preparing to DPI the entire internet.

      Yes, I said "ironic." Come at me, pedants.

      --
      DATABASE WOW WOW
    2. Re:All paid for by... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It's like rain on your wedding day.

    3. Re:All paid for by... by Z34107 · · Score: 1

      I'm pretending the groom is the weatherman.

      --
      DATABASE WOW WOW
    4. Re:All paid for by... by kenorland · · Score: 1

      That's because the anti-Google propaganda in Europe was driven by European publishers, TV stations, and lobbyists who saw the Internet in general, and Google in particular, cutting into their profits. Add to that the usual dose of European anti-Americanism, and you have the basis for the extreme hostility to Google. European corporations, their lobbyists, and the governments they have in their pockets have no problem with violating the privacy rights of European citizens themselves. Neither do the various "state security services" of the oh-so-democratic European governments.

  9. World Learders are preparing for WW3, no doubt by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    As in before W1, W2, large scale increased survailance happened.

    And also note, us govt is buying up large amounts of ammo, stock piling , building fema camps etc..

    Stupid govts, if there is a WW3, I hope the aftermath has no more unions, or big countries, but 5x more smaller countries, that none can ever grow too big to rule, or too rich to build massive weapons cache.

  10. Who's stupid enough to go clearnet? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Say I were a terrorist, a drug dealer (Silkroad!), or a pedophile.

    I'd be using TOR at the least, maybe even private relays or a darknet exclusive to my (very illegal) purposes. How is this going to solve anything?

    1. Re:Who's stupid enough to go clearnet? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So what I ask, is this just continuing social darwinism and picking off the lowest hanging fruit, or actually finding the really dangerous baddies?

  11. Oh the European Union ! by bigscience · · Score: 2

    Well the way things are going in the EU it doesn't seem likely it will be around in 10 or 12 years time. They are already breaking up in terms of monetary union. Besides which, every story like this attracts a whole flurry of comments like "OMG the government is gonna be watching us - time to go live on the moon" I dont see what is wrong with trying to stop people accessing information which is clearly only there to either assist in weapons making or to provide resources for people who want to cause widespead terror. What is more frightening is the demands the British government are seeking to put on Wikipedia regarding the monitoring and blocking of certain web pages to british citizens http://www.publictechnology.net/news/wikipedia-boss-wont-support-technologically-incompetent-uk-govt-web-plan/37139 The Home Office has admitted it cannot force foreign companies like Google and Facebook to hand over sensitive personal data and is relying on people like Wales to agree to do so voluntarily. Elsewhere World Wide Web creator Tim Berners-Lee also weighed in against the bill. "In Britain, like in the US, there has been a series of Bills that would give government very strong powers to, for example, collect data. I am worried about that," he told The Times. "If the UK introduces draconian legislation that allows the Government to block websites or to snoop on people, which decreases privacy, in future indexes they may find themselves further down the list."

    1. Re:Oh the European Union ! by tibit · · Score: 1

      I dont see what is wrong with trying to stop people accessing information which is clearly only there to either assist in weapons making or to provide resources for people who want to cause widespead terror.

      You're wrong, plain and simple. What information is for depends on how someone intends to use it. By being an engineer I obviously have a lot of information about how to wreck infrastructure and otherwise terrorize a whole lot of people. Most engineers have such knowledge even if they pretend otherwise. You're like a 6 year old kid who anthropomorphizes things and says "bad information!". Sorry to break your childish bubble, but there is no information that is "clearly only there to do X". It's in your mind, you seriously made up a fantasy where you have some fact (the information), and you imagine that it's bad. Information is not human, it has no feelings, desires, goals, seriously, get it out of your head or seek psychiatric help. You can use a decent highschool chemistry textbook to inflict way more damage than the 9/11 bastards did. Even reading religious texts like the bible provides plenty of ideas. I mean, thinking like you, why on Earth would you want to know the details of how to crucify someone?! Obviously it's of no other use than to run around and crucify people, right? Get real.

      --
      A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
    2. Re:Oh the European Union ! by bigscience · · Score: 1

      there is a massive difference between some religious extremist researching how to make bombs from household products and a fully qualified engineer researching the subject of demolition. I would go further and say that websites advocating terrorism should not only be blocked but their owners prosecuted and imprisoned. Which planet are you living on? You're certainly not from planet earth I know that much. In london 5 home made bombs exploded on busses and trains which killed and injured people and injured them in life altering ways. I think regarding your assertion that I need psychiatric help, well I think you've probably proved to a great many people on the internet that your vitriol is worthy of psychiatric attention itself. Let me know if life gets too much for you, my brother in law is a psychiatrist I will be able to get some help on the cheap for you

    3. Re:Oh the European Union ! by tibit · · Score: 1

      Those people were dead set to kill others. Censure of information doesn't fix that. It your fantasy. I understand your anguish and stuff, but it doesn't work that way.

      --
      A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
  12. freedom lost by reovirus1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If they hated us for our freedoms, we must be pretty well liked by now.

  13. Grass greener...over there. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Gosh darn it! There goes my fantasy that Europe is better than the US.

    1. Re:Grass greener...over there. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You actually ever believed that shit? Europeans have made an art out of fascism, police states and racial genocide.

    2. Re:Grass greener...over there. by 0123456 · · Score: 2

      Europeans have made an art out of fascism, police states and racial genocide.

      But they get FREE HEALTHCARE!

    3. Re:Grass greener...over there. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I know you're trolling, but Europe is comprised of many states with completely different cultures, languages and histories. Some rednecks like the Germans and English have a nasty history of genocide and hatred (Mau Mau concentration camps in Africa decades after the end of world war 2), to be honest they should be combined with African gene pools until whatever remains is culturally inoffensive, and some with no history of imperialism and slaughter at all. So think before you troll!

    4. Re:Grass greener...over there. by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      Schwedentrunk (Swedish drink) - when Sweden moved down in 1618–1648 their baggage train had a special way of making the locals hand over anything of interest.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    5. Re:Grass greener...over there. by cffrost · · Score: 1

      The average European is a vicious, rabid dog.

      So what? Tell us what's important, JockTroll: Is the average European a loserboy?

      --
      Thank you, Edward Snowden.

      "Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
    6. Re:Grass greener...over there. by Hentes · · Score: 1

      Europe is better because everytime our governments try somehing like this, the people have a chance to vote it down in the EP.

    7. Re:Grass greener...over there. by r_a_trip · · Score: 1

      The average European is a vicious, rabid dog.

      Oh come on, don't flatter us! We'd almost asume you think we are actually human.

      --
      # touch universe # chmod +rwx universe # ./universe
    8. Re:Grass greener...over there. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I know you're trolling

      In what way? Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, etc never existed? Do we ignore that Pol Pot was basically trained by French communists in his ideology while studying abroad before returning to Cambodia to oppress and murder millions? Because it wasn't European settlers to North and South America which was the cause of millions of indigenous people being slaughtered and wiped out? Because the UK's spying network of CCTVs doesn't exist? Because there weren't police states in the Eastern European countries during the Cold War years? Europeans have a long history of exactly the things I stated that has spanned thousands of years. Pointing out the facts is not trolling even if they are inconvenient to your sensibilities.

    9. Re:Grass greener...over there. by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 1

      Hmm the whole thing about the EU Constitution and it's Fundamental Rights provisions not being binding makes it a bit less so, I think.

  14. Re:We need COMMUNISM, now! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Capitalsme is dying and it is time for the workers to bury it! For the dictatorship of the PROLETARIAT!!!!!!!! underpants

    USSR style communism or Mao Zedong style communism.

    Because they both worked so much better than western style capitalism.

  15. America! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Get out of Europe. We don't want your "terrorism" here.

  16. The real evilness: mandated "real identities" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Anyone else read that? The part that pushes "internet companies" to REQUIRE and verify what they consider "real" identities, including "real" pictures of users on social-media sites? How can that not lead to, essentially, government-enabled internet stalking and the complete extinguishing of legally-protected anonymous speech?

    And who the fuck are they, or anyone, to declare what a "real" identity online means, or should mean?

    Whoever is involved in this effort must never work in IT or government ever, ever again.

  17. Hitler and Himmler will be SOOO pleased by freedom_india · · Score: 0

    ... that their suggestions are being carried out. Dumbasses should not have fought USSR. Else, we would see an United Europe, no more pesky football hooliganism, or migration for that reason. We should appreciate the Nazis for their foresightedness.

    --
    "Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
  18. Can anybody help me out? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 3, Funny

    I've just found a 'radicalizing' document, clearly a piece of propaganda designed to convince me that Europe is a surveillance state run by some mixture of terrified ninnies and cynical grifters! But I can't find the reporting button to alert the proper authorities and have it taken down, what do I do?

  19. Eu is appointed not elected by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The wrong people are already in charge. EU Commission is appointed, not elected, They don't take their direction from EU voters, they take their direction, mostly it seems from non-EU governments and lobbyists. ACTA was the rule not the exception.

    I'm amazed they're using terrorism, the copyright lobbyists suggested CP as their primary weapon. Give us copyright filtering or you diddle kiddies:

    See this article:
    http://boingboing.net/2010/04/28/music-industry-spoke.html

    "Child pornography is great," the speaker at the podium declared enthusiastically. "It is great because politicians understand child pornography. By playing that card, we can get them to act, and start blocking sites. And once they have done that, we can get them to start blocking file sharing sites".

    The venue was a seminar organized by the American Chamber of Commerce in Stockholm on May 27, 2007, under the title "Sweden -- A Safe Haven for Pirates?". The speaker was Johan Schlüter from the Danish Anti-Piracy Group, a lobby organization for the music and film industry associations, like IFPI and others...

    "One day we will have a giant filter that we develop in close cooperation with IFPI and MPA. We continuously monitor the child porn on the net, to show the politicians that filtering works. Child porn is an issue they understand," Johan Schlüter said with a grin, his whole being radiating pride and enthusiasm from the podium.

    1. Re:Eu is appointed not elected by Mashiki · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The wrong people are already in charge. EU Commission is appointed, not elected, They don't take their direction from EU voters, they take their direction, mostly it seems from non-EU governments and lobbyists. ACTA was the rule not the exception.

      And the last time I told people on /. that the EU was a defacto dictatorship in the making people called me insane because there was a massive organization over the top that's appointed. Hah. Yeah, sure I'm the crazy one. You know your post just scratches the surface, these are the same ones that pushed through the "monetary fiat" rule that lets them basically turn on the printing presses of every EU member and bankrupt them, without any say-so of the elected government. If I remember right, the amount they're allowed to print is somewhere around 1T per member state. Yeah, so...enjoy that...

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    2. Re:Eu is appointed not elected by kenorland · · Score: 2

      They don't take their direction from EU voters, they take their direction, mostly it seems from non-EU governments and lobbyists. ACTA was the rule not the exception.

      Actually, they take a lot of their direction from EU-based lobbyists, and many of those EU-based lobbyists are also messing up US politics. Yes, EU-based corporations are at least as bad as US-based corporations, arguably worse. And Europe also has strong churches and strong unions that want to get their slice of the pie too, and usually succeed.

      The US is really the least of Europe's worries, but it serves as a convenient scapegoat for European politicians and European lobbyists: "America made us do it!".

    3. Re:Eu is appointed not elected by kenorland · · Score: 1, Interesting

      When you look at its 20th century history, Europe is barely democratic. Spain and Portugal were military dictatorships, East Germany was communist, as were many of the new states, and West Germany was rebuilt by ex-Nazis. Northern Ireland was a war zone. Large parts of Europe are in bed with one church or another. It's silly to expect a continent with that kind of history to have much of a commitment to liberty or democracy. To be sure, the European desire for peace, liberty, and democracy is strong, but they have always had problems achieving it. By historical standards, the current period of peace in Europe is barely a breather.

    4. Re:Eu is appointed not elected by lordholm · · Score: 5, Informative

      The EU commission is not DIRECTLY elected, but neither is any other government in Europe. With the exceptions of a few presidents (most being powerless and appointed) no head of state/government is directly elected in Europe. De-facto, most governments are picked from parliament, though this is not a legal requirement in most states. The commission is in fact elected by parliament, although it is also at the same time appointed by the memberstates' governments. In most states in Europe, the prime minister is appointed (in some cases by the king/queen/president and in other cases by the speaker of parliament who is appointed in some other way), and then elected by parliament. This is actually not that much different. Although, it would clearly be better if the commission is taken from parliament from a democratic standpoint, some states does not seem to like the idea that much. But things are changing for the better.

      Following the Lisbon treaty, the Commission president will be selected from the candidates fielded by the European parties starting with the next EP-elections in 2014. In addition to this, the future group (consisting of some of the EU foreign ministers) have also fielded the idea that the commission should be selected by the commission president and subject to the normal parliamentary scrutiny of a memberstate government (and presumably with a requirement to have one commissioner from each memberstate).

      --
      "Civis Europaeus sum!"
    5. Re:Eu is appointed not elected by lordholm · · Score: 2

      Well, not for no reason... in a dictatorship, using the modern meaning of the word as in "not a democracy", most people are afraid of opening their mouths. If they say the wrong thing, they will be dragged away in vans, during the middle of the night and disappear; or in the less murderous dictatorships, simply be tossed into jail or prison for an indefinite time.

      This is not about to happen in the EU anytime soon, so yes you need to be insane if you attribute these things to the EU.

      --
      "Civis Europaeus sum!"
    6. Re:Eu is appointed not elected by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      The wrong people are already in charge. EU Commission is appointed, not elected,

      Yes, appointed by our elected governments to serve them. They are civil servants. Of course we do have directly elected Members of the European Parliament too.

      They don't take their direction from EU voters, they take their direction, mostly it seems from non-EU governments and lobbyists. ACTA was the rule not the exception.

      The EU killed ACTA. It listened to its citizens opposition and made the right decision, despite heavy lobbying and pressure from the US.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    7. Re:Eu is appointed not elected by Teun · · Score: 2
      I'm undoing moderation to refute your silly comment about the democratic status of the EU.
      The commission is, like in several EU nation governments, made up of bureaucrats, they are appointed by the democratically controlled governments of the member states.
      In many EU nations democracy is by way of an elected parliament controlling a government that in itself is not elected.
      And we cherish this principle of Trias Politica, an independent legislature (the parliament), an independent judiciary and an independent executive (the government).
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_powers

      As a matter of fact, those of us who subscribe to this system frown on systems where there is collusion between the government and parliament.

      --
      "The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
    8. Re:Eu is appointed not elected by Teun · · Score: 1

      Your idea it would from a democratic point of view be better to have the commission taken from the parliament is to many Europeans at least contentious.
      The potential outcome would be a suspicion of collusion between the executive and the legislative.
      Luckily (?) Europe is so diverse and will probably remain so for a long time, that a one party lead government is not going to happen but hey, who would have expected such in post WW-I Germany?

      --
      "The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
    9. Re:Eu is appointed not elected by lordholm · · Score: 1

      The European tradition is parliamentary democracy, so that the executive is picked from parliament is essentially the normal rule in Europe (directly elected executives are really rare). Naturally, one can also think of a more US or French style system, where the commission president would be directly elected. Though, this has its own issues in that the president cannot be sacked as easily, which in my mind is a really important feature of the parliamentarian way. Though, it would arguably be better than the current mechanism, but really, it is not a big issue whether the Commission president is picked by parliament or by the public, as long as he/her is not appointed by the memberstates and you take care of the details (like the sackability of a directly elected president). This is why the improvements for the next EP election stemming from the Lisbon treaty, in this area are really huge and important.

      I honestly believe that the change of appointment mechanism of the Commission president is the single most fundamental and important democratic reform in the EU since the public elections of the parliament was started.

      --
      "Civis Europaeus sum!"
    10. Re:Eu is appointed not elected by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ...simply be tossed into jail or prison for an indefinite time.

      haha, like in Myanmar and the US

    11. Re:Eu is appointed not elected by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Problem is that people were indoctrinated in schools about freedom and mentally petrified with stories about fascism. The whole story about the slippery slope, how people are pliable. This together with plain xenophobia and low results in people thinking that any democracy that does not look exactly like their democracy (as they know it) must be infact a DICTATORSHIP.
      Thank you for commenting. I find it hard to respond to the masses of conspiracy anti EU crackpots on the net.

    12. Re:Eu is appointed not elected by BenoitRen · · Score: 1

      You've done a good job summing up what used to be problem areas in Europe. However, I very much doubt this "in bed with one church or another" thing and it doesn't change that there are still a non-trivial amount of countries that have and still do value democracy. France, The Netherlands, Belgium, the UK (sans North Ireland),...

    13. Re:Eu is appointed not elected by kenorland · · Score: 1

      However, I very much doubt this "in bed with one church or another" thing

      Almost all European nations either have a state church or transfer massive amounts of money to churches. That's pretty characteristic of Europe: what people believe about it is totally out of touch with reality.

      it doesn't change that there are still a non-trivial amount of countries that have and still do value democracy

      Of those, only the British form of government has proven reasonably stable over time. The whole lot was guilty of the most vile forms of colonialism, France nearly came to a civil war in 1958, and it really doesn't matter what the Belgians or Dutch believe because they are little more than soccer balls for the powers that surround them. The only reason Europe hasn't started a bunch of new wars is because people are rich. If the European economy goes down the drain further (and it will), Europeans will demand what they consider their birthright, wealth and power, and they'll stop at nothing to get it.

    14. Re:Eu is appointed not elected by Mashiki · · Score: 1

      Right then. Could you remind us then why the said appointed commission successfully managed to overthrow two democratically elected governments in the EU(Greece and Italy) on the threat of "no more money" unless the the heads of said governments left, and they held new elections. Separation of powers indeed. That's not separation of powers, and that's not democracy in action.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    15. Re:Eu is appointed not elected by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      then thos is one more reason to fu..k europe as a currency, a politics institution and a organization... !

  20. Back off EU! Big Brother is British! by kawabago · · Score: 1

    Yes we need to be protected but not at the cost of our freedom.

  21. Big Government by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Keep growing that government there in the US, and you'll get this too, real soon.

  22. Re:F=MA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You mean: FEMA ?

  23. Re:We need COMMUNISM, now! by Artifakt · · Score: 1

    I'm a Trotskyite, you insensitive clod! (Not really!)

    --
    Who is John Cabal?
  24. U-S-A! U-S-A! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    U-S-A! U-S-A! Oh, wait... WTF?

  25. Companies have responsibility too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's not all bad. Seems a bit Draconian, but certainly not full 1984:

    "Companies providing end-user filtering systems and their customers should be liable for failing to report “illegal” activity identified by the filter "

  26. oops sorry.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    they don't Bye Europe. I'm stain out!

    Also, it appears to be written up / drafted by people with low IQ's:

    "The anonymity of individuals reporting (possibly) illegal content must be preserved... yet their IP address must be logged to permit them to be prosecuted if it is suspected that they are reporting legal content deliberately and to permit reliable informants' reports to be processed more quickly "

    That's like saying, 'the anonymity of individuals must be preserved yet it won't be'. Also, spies/snitches given priority. It's actually very 1984, and laughably inept.

  27. Pirates and Terrorists by fearofcarpet · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Some day I am going to have to explain to my son how we managed to defeat a genocidal megalomaniac bend on world domination, narrowly avoid nuclear annihilation, and rebuild an entire continent in the 20th Century, but that in the 21st Century somehow pirates and terrorists are the biggest threat to Western Civilization. But my biggest fear is that he is growing up in a world where the bar for personal privacy, security, and liberty has been set alarmingly low.

    Those of us who experienced privacy in the pre-WWW, pre-datamining era--the before time, the long-long-ago--still have a viscerally negative reaction when we learn about how Company X is collecting information on us in some new-and-intrusive way. Even when it's to protect us from pirates and terrorists, we at least object to it even though we have, thus far, just rolled over, muttering under our breath as a glorified hall monitor looks at pictures of our naked bodies before we are allowed to board an airplane. And we still get angry when we find out that a government is spying on us and listening in to our conversations--digitally encoded or otherwise.

    People born after 2000 will have no memory of a smart-phone-free world by the time they are of voting age. They won't find it unsettling that you have to enter a credit card number before you can log into your iThing or that their toaster needs to know their birth date. Let's just hope that the elderly continue to have a disproportionate influence in electoral politics--at least until I die.

    --
    Actually, I wrote my thesis on life experience.
    1. Re:Pirates and Terrorists by Aryden · · Score: 1

      If only I had mod points. +1

    2. Re:Pirates and Terrorists by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It is truly awful. But honestly, your post doesn't even fully characterize the nature of this treachery. From my understanding of these people, all your son has to do is bump into one of these rulers children some day and knock his golden brush out of his hand, and your sons device will suddenly be loaded with kiddy porn and so will yours, and you'll both never be heard from again.

      That's the kind of tyranny these people are into I'm afraid - where people are cattle.. *sigh* We need to get out of this grid

    3. Re:Pirates and Terrorists by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You are totally correct, this is how the privacy of the individual is eroded over time until the frog is completely boiled !!

  28. That's the real problem isn't it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Human beings are just a pebbles throw away from greatness. We can get the freedom, and empower people to develop something like the internet but they just fall slightly short when it comes to designing these technologies with the level of care that is needed.

    We wouldn't even be having this conversation if the guys who designed the internet built Tor into it from the beginning. If they were clever enough to devise a method for communication digitally over telephone lines, why couldn't they go a step further and make routing encrypted, or even have bit torrent built into the kernel. Have anti root kit, built into every kernel/root. Until we humans start properly, and I mean really properly designing technology (we need to be more conservative), we will always be facing these obstacles.

  29. Re:The next WW... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... will be the people vs. the governments around the world.

    That's the fruit of globalisation: No more war between nations, yeah right.

  30. And Yet a Pirate party member by Aryden · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Is onboard with this....

    Pirate Party Switzerland (Pascal Gloor, who also posted a blog about the Berlin meeting, in french) Link to his blog post

    1. Re:And Yet a Pirate party member by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      could be a pirate party infiltrator/spy/co-opt minion. Who knows? It's crazy the pirate party would be into it, but maybe it's just to have a good inside man to see what these people are doing.

      Any company that participates gets to be in the working group, so all good companies should either join, or derail this thing permanently by other means

    2. Re:And Yet a Pirate party member by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Makes me wonder if they really are replacing all elected officials with pod people - if even the Pirate party member gets behind this sort of shit.

    3. Re:And Yet a Pirate party member by alexo · · Score: 1

      The title says "I am anti-terrorism ..."

      And yet, we all know that "terrorism", similar to "child porn", is a bogeyman used to justify stripping the populace of whatever rights they still hold.

      Pirate Party my ass, he's a totalitarian scumbag just like the rest of them, and should suffer the same fate as the marketing division of Sirius Cybernetics Corporation.

  31. it's a "history is written by the vicor" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    kind of thing. The rat bast@rd states (Germany, UK etc. all Royal family ridden) start it, followed by the broken minion states - Greece, Hungary etc. and all the while have the media make it look like the starter states are the good ones, and the freedom-loving ones like France, Finland, Norway, Ireland etc. will be recorded by history as being the bad guys...

    Here is the list of the true satan-worshipping states of Europe:

            Netherlands
            Germany
            United Kingdom
            Belgium
            Spain

    Move along now slaves :(

    1. Re:it's a "history is written by the vicor" by Teun · · Score: 1

      Why do you say Germany is Royal family ridden?
      Because there is mainly German aristocratic blood running through the British royal family?

      --
      "The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
  32. aw by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    you missed out on page 11 then. It's wonderful:

    "a. No wording of European standard service/business conditions or abuse policy should be recommended. What should be recommended is a best practice how to [_*]handle[*_] abuse, and how to make such policy transparent;"

    There, you have it folks. The mob run Europe too, they might even be more set up there who knows. I'm not going back there if I can help it. It's so brazenly thuggish, that it's remarkably easy to decipher. This is their wish list of course though. They don't have a chance of getting most of this imo.

    Resist!

  33. now propose the nicer version by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Now politicians can introduce the real proposal, the not so far reaching, but pretty much the same, proposal and it stand out as being sensitive to public opinion.

  34. American Chamber of Commerce = GOP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The article quotes the American Chamber of Commerce, which is a Republican industry funded lobby group. Its sound bites were then used by politicians lobbying for EU's version of ACTA.

    http://www.techdirt.com/blog/?tag=maxime+verhagen

    e.g. Maxime Verhagen accusing opponents of support child porn if they rejected the EU version of ACTA.

    So you made the claim American is being used as a scapegoat, but you didn't refute the claim I made.

  35. EU Commission is NOT elected, not even indirect by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If I want to sack Gordon Brown, I can vote for David Cameron, there is a clear choice which causes the change.
    If I want to sack Barosso that's not possible. The EU elections are out of sync with national elections, the candidates for the EU job aren't even known at voting time, let alone who would vote for whom. So it's not 'vote for Labour is a vote for Barosso, a vote for Cons is a vote for ....' because you don't know whose standing and no party can tell you at national election time who they will vote for at the next EU opportunity.

    So, IN NO WAY, can European voters choose even INDIRECTLY who will run the EU Commission.

    2014 change will not fix this, it token change. A non choice choice.

    1. Re:EU Commission is NOT elected, not even indirect by SomeKDEUser · · Score: 2

      You want to sack Barroso? Easy, vote for the ESP or ALDE. If the majority of the EP is to the left, the president of the commission will come from their ranks. Currently, the conservatives are the largest block, and so Barroso is the president.

      Of course, you are a Brit, so in any case, you can vote Labour, and that goes towards the ESP, or Lib Dem, and that goes towards the ALDE. If you vote Tory, well, you are helping the EP block containing the fascists and crazies -- it's true, they decided themselves they were not a mainstream conservative party in Europe.

      I guess that explains the way they are running the country, no?

    2. Re:EU Commission is NOT elected, not even indirect by lordholm · · Score: 1

      So you are saying that, if the EU change the system, so it effectively works in the same way as national elections (i.e. you know who will be commission president if your side wins), it is still not good enough...

      Sigh... typical eurosceptic thinking... any fix of a problem is not good enough.

      Complaint: Commission president is not known or elected during the election.
      Fix: European parties elect a commission president candidate before the election.
      Result: Commission president is known and de-facto elected during the EP election.

      How is this a token change? Can you please say what they should do instead. If the most fundamental democratic reform at the EU-level since the introduction of the elected parliament is apparently only a token change, how is it to be done?

      By the way, only very few voters in the UK can vote for Cameron; wonder what would happen if the prime-ministerial candidate would not win in his constituency? Would your pre-known prime ministerial candidate still be prime minister?

      If in the next election, you don't like the ECR (Conservative) candidate, then you simply vote for one of the other parties, like PES (Labour) or ALDE (LibDem) or whatever. Of course, the ECR candidate will never be elected as Commission president as ECR does not have enough votes Europe-vide for that, but that is the nature of democracy after all.

      --
      "Civis Europaeus sum!"
    3. Re:EU Commission is NOT elected, not even indirect by Grumbleduke · · Score: 1

      If I want to sack Gordon Brown, I can vote for David Cameron, there is a clear choice which causes the change.

      You can't actually vote for David Cameron unless you are in Witney, Oxfordshire (which has had at least a 10% Conservative lead since its creation), and then only once every 5 years. And that would only be in elections for Parliament, not for Prime Minister.

      In the UK, the Prime Minister is appointed by the Queen, traditionally being the leader of the Party with a majority in the House of Commons (currently the Party with the most members in the HoC). The Queen also appoints the Cabinet (on the advice of the Prime Minister), traditionally the majority being from the House of Commons, but some from the unelected House of Lords (and on rare occasions when someone else is wanted, they get created a Lord). The Prime Minister and the Cabinet run the executive branch of the UK government, and while in theory they are answerable to the Parliament, in practice they run the country without much opposition (the last successful vote of no confidence was in 1979).

      Compared with the UK, the EU is pretty democratic; it has better separation of powers and more proportional elections, it has a Parliament that isn't entirely dependent on the executive (and is willing to vote against them when needed; ACTA was a big step in that direction) and is quite happy to "fire" Commissioners when needed. Combine that with the fact that the President of the Commission has to be elected by the Parliament, and it's pretty shiny. That said, it needs work.

  36. USAians by ThatsNotPudding · · Score: 0

    Perfectly content to live their entire lives in government prison - provided they're allowed shitty network TV and guns (that are useless against this type of prison).

  37. So the USA is not a democracy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Since your president is put there by the electoral college.

    1. Re:So the USA is not a democracy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Since your president is put there by the electoral college.

      No, it's not. It's a republic. Well, actually it's an oligarchy but on paper it's a republic.

    2. Re:So the USA is not a democracy by Mashiki · · Score: 1

      Since your president is put there by the electoral college.

      Useful protip: I have a prime minister.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
  38. Stupidity squared by xenobyte · · Score: 1

    Why do government always think that monitoring and surveilance is the key to preventing terror, solve major crimes etc.?

    Unless the go all the way and aim for the full Orwellian package with Big Brother, thought police etc. it will give nothing but a false sense of security. It's too easily circumvented, if it works at all. It is basically yet another form of security theater just like the 'security checks' at the airport, and it's just a futile and worthless waste of money.

    I think it's a matter of bad advice from greedy 'advisors' on the payroll of businesses provide these futile products. Even politicians cannot be that stupid without help.

    --
    "For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
  39. Re:We need COMMUNISM, now! by Chrisq · · Score: 1

    Capitalsme is dying and it is time for the workers to bury it!

    You expect me to bury it? I want minimum wage, 20 holiday days a year, paid sick, and a pension before I even consider burying anything for you
    -- A Worker

  40. Paranoia as a Breakfast Cereal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No smoke, no gun

  41. Don't need to read the article just the title.. by 3seas · · Score: 1

    ... and the real question is : why do the few want to monitor the many?
    There really is only one answer. It is so to commit wrongs against the public in all the many ways monitoring can provide such.

    Wars are started and played by the few with the bravery of being out of range.
    The results of war are proving to be far more damaging to the public than, if at all, the few instigating the wars.
    By monitoring the public and controlling the media a feedback loop for manipulation is created.
    Additionally should the few decide to kill off a portion of the public then having control over the things you'd want control over become available to use, I.e. traffic, communications, energy, food , etc. Standard warfare manual stuff.

    The expense of monitoring is paid for by who else but the tax payers and the crime reduction amount (not considering the crimes such monitoring makes possible) is not justified for such expense. This alone is should send a red flag.

    This is the wrong approach to crime reduction. The better approach is to work towards applying that which inherently causes a reduction. Knowledge begets knowledge and specific knowledge begets more of its own, I.e. warfare begets more warfare... and so it is also with peaceful a direction of improvements to teh environment and lifestyles will beget more of that.

    It is not the people who need to be monitored, it is those who are supposed to represent the people in need of being monitored in what they do in that job. This no different than and employer knowing what their employees are doing.

  42. Candidate by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Me: We can't vote for the EU Commission
    You: You will be able to vote for a party that can offer a candidate that MAY be chosen by the council.

    So EU politics is spread, you can guarantee a selection of candidates from all wings of politics, just as you can now. The people who make the REAL choice are the council, and they always choose the weakest one.
    The weakest in turn, bends over backwards for them, and also any lobbyist, foreign power, corp, BUT NOT PEOPLE, because he wasn't chosen by any democratic process. The people could have favoured his rival, but the choice wasn't there's it was the councils.

    He's beholden to the council not to the people.

    1. Re:Candidate by lordholm · · Score: 1

      De-jure, the European Council must select a candidate taking the EP election results into account. This means appointing the candidate from the biggest party group. If they would appoint another one, that candidate will never pass the parliaments vote.

      Effectively, this is the same as the rules in most memberstates. Any PM in the Council who objects to this appointment is violating the treaty. In addition, the selection is also to big an issue to ignore the parliament on this. They have been plenty pissed about lesser issues...

      --
      "Civis Europaeus sum!"
    2. Re:Candidate by Grumbleduke · · Score: 1

      You: We can't vote for the EU Commission
      Me: Name n* countries where you can vote for top people in the executive?
      Also me: The President of the Commission has to be elected by the Parliament, so you get to vote for a candidate who gets to vote for the President.

      The people who make the REAL choice are the council

      And the council is appointed by the governments of the member states, who are, in theory, democratically elected (mostly indirectly). However, following the Lisbon Treaty, the power balance is swinging more in favour of the Parliament, and they're increasingly throwing their weight around (e.g. ACTA). Yes, there are more improvements needed (such as giving the Parliament the power to start legislation), but in time it will happen.

      *Off the top of my head, I can't think of any, so n=1. However, I have limited knowledge of most government structures, so there probably is one somewhere. Perhaps try for n=3?

    3. Re:Candidate by lordholm · · Score: 1

      "council is appointed by the governments"

      This is not correct, the council IS the governments of the member states, which makes the anti EU thing, where he hates the EU but loves the national government really silly.

      "Name n* countries where you can vote for top people in the executive?"

      This only happens in presidential systems where the president has powers... I suppose, in the EU this is only France. Maybe the British eurosceptics want to fire the Queen and elect their monarch instead; this would be consistent with their insisting on the lack of EC president election being a major issue. Somehow I doubt it though :)

      --
      "Civis Europaeus sum!"
  43. Just why by Dunge · · Score: 0

    WHY?

  44. STOP EUROPE NOW ! MOVEMENT by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    HI I want to notify all that we must start a STOP EUROPE NOW ! movement to

    1. ban and stop any furer, I mean FURTHER, step in towards european statehood and political unification

    2. let ACTUAL PEOPLE and not nominated big business PUPPETS like it is now decide any thing in the current established european system - notice the small "e"

    3. REPEAL ALL AND ANY european legislation which is not directly and unoversally being voted upon by the masses

    ONLY after this is done we shall as EUROPEANS feel free and safe from DICTATORSHIP OF PIG BUSINESS ...as is europe now...